Montana Wrongful Discharge

Review “Montana: Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act” in Chapter 2. Please respond to the following:

Identify the parts of this law that appear to benefit employees.

❖ An employer can only discharge an employee for a good cause. ❖ Employees can’t be discharged for reporting a public policy violation. ❖ Employees can’t be discharged for reporting employer’s violation of employer’s own written personnel policy. ❖ If employer commits wrongful discharged, employee may be awarded lost wages and fringe benefits up to 4 years from discharge date, and employee may also seek punitive damages.

Identify the parts of this law that appear to benefit employers.

❖ Employee can be discharged for good cause and as long as the employer can prove that employee was let go of good cause, employer will win the case. ❖ Employer can let go of an employee for insufficient work performance although employee may have received bad training from employer.

The state laws protecting whistleblowers vary enormously, but none of them protect whistleblowers who turn to the media first.

Discuss why you think this is so.
Explain why it either encourages or discourages ethical behavior.

I believe state laws do not protect whistleblowers if they turn to the media first because employees should first try to resolve the issue with a manager or manager’s manager. By turning to the media first, they fail their obligation as loyal employees and also the duty to care. Employees should follow the correct procedures for reporting violations. If the employee is afraid of retaliation, most companies now have anonymous line mainly for reporting such concerns.
I believe that this encourages ethical behavior because it prevents an employee from acquiring his/her 15 minutes of fame by going to the media first and helps focuses the employee on using the proper channels in reporting any concerns.

References:
Halbert, T. and Ingulli, E. (2009). Law and ethics

References: Halbert, T. and Ingulli, E. (2009).  Law and ethics in the business environment:  2010 custom edition (6th ed.).  Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Review “Just pucker and blow: An analysis of corporate whistleblowers” in Chapter 2. Please respond to the following: Describe the conflict faced by corporate insiders who discover unethical or illegal activities within their organization. Corporate insiders must act in good faith and in a manner that they reasonably believe will be in the best interest of the corporation including safeguarding corporate information. Also they have a duty to care for the corporation as they would their own. So in this case, the insider who has to be loyal to his company and may not be able to go to the authorities with information that can damage the company’s reputation also has to care for this same company and in caring means if there is anything unethical going on should be able to whistle blow it, however this creates conflict for the insider. It’s like they are stuck in between, however way you look at, whether they report it or not, they are damned as the book stated because once authorities know, the company might suffer public humiliation and if they don’t report it, the company eventually will collapse due to everything blowing up just like Enron. Describe the kinds of corporate wrongdoing a senior executive might discover that would not be covered by Sarbanes-Oxley The Act provides protection only for those matters that involve security fraud so whistleblowing of other kinds of wrongdoing remain unprotected under this Act. Some of the wrongdoings or unethical behavior a senior executive might discover that wouldn’t be covered by the Sarbanes-Oxley act is racial discrimination; he or she might hear negative remarks about a certain racial group from a top exec and would not be able to whistleblow because of his or her obligation to protect certain corporate information and these types of matter doesn’t involve security fraud so the only protection he/she may have if she put her/himself in whistleblowing situation will be state laws protection. Low-level employees are also generally unprotected by this Act. Lower-level employees may be students and those re-entering the workforce and generally those people rely heavily on their paychecks and are usually reluctant in reporting or blowing any wrongdoing which in most cases they are not fully informed and again unless it has to do with securities fraud, the Act doesn’t cover and generally lower-level employees don’t deal with securities so they wouldn’t be well informed even if they knew something wrong was going on. Reference: Halbert, T. and Ingulli, E. (2009).  Law and ethics in the business environment:  2010 custom edition (6th ed.).  Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. [pic][pic][pic][pic][pic][pic]